


The Comfort of Coming Down

by MadcapRomantic



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angst, Barebacking, Bottom Stiles Stilinski, Canon-Typical Gore, Canon-Typical Violence, Derek Hale Takes Care of Stiles Stilinski, Derek Hale is Bad at Feelings, Derek is Not a Failwolf, Derek is a Good Alpha, Explicit Sexual Content, Fluff, M/M, Mild Comeplay, Oral Sex, Pack Mom Stiles, Pack Mother Stiles Stilinski, Panic Attacks, Stiles is oblivious, Top Derek Hale, Top Derek Hale/Bottom Stiles Stilinski, brief mention of past Stiles/Malia, no one dies and everything is fine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-14
Updated: 2018-06-28
Packaged: 2019-03-31 06:06:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13968957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MadcapRomantic/pseuds/MadcapRomantic
Summary: Stiles isn't the only human in the pack, but, more often than not, he's the most vulnerable.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> You know the drill - get out your bingo cards and mark off the following; Derek needs to use his words, Derek is a good Alpha, Stiles is oblivious, Peter is nominally sane, and no one dies and everything is fine. Any triggers will be marked at the bottom of every chapter, but if you feel I've missed one, feel free to let me know so I can amend it.
> 
> Please don't post this anywhere, offsite or otherwise.

It's like clockwork; baddies come, baddies get defeated, and the pack goes home to nurse their wounds (and more often than not, their wounded pride).

Stiles is on the sidelines this time, but that doesn't mean he doesn't play. Hurling fireballs takes a lot of effort, and doing so in close quarters can be a bit of a fire hazard, a danger in which they’d all learned about the hard way. Boyd’s eyebrows were still growing back. So, in instances where danger levels teeter on the “too damn high” scale for squishy humans, Stiles tries to stay out of sight, and out of the way, until his unique expertise is needed. In this case, when the Monster of the Week (trademark pending) has knocked all of Stiles’ werewolf friends on their furry asses, it's time for him to pull out the Big Guns (again, trademark pending).

The monster of the week this time? A wendigo that had kidnapped and incapacitated Lydia. If the black eye her unconscious form was sporting when they found her is any indication of how she’s been treated, the wrath of her werewolf friends is a far more merciful fate for the wendigo.

As it stands, a full grown wendigo isn’t easy prey. Even with Derek and Boyd both teaming up and shoulder-checking the thing, it practically _shrugs them off_. Erica launches herself on the wendigo’s back and bites its throat in an attempt to subdue it. While her teeth barely pierce the thick skin of the creature, it gives Derek and Boyd enough time to scramble to their feet and ready another double-team attack.

So far no one has died; they found the creature’s lair half an hour ago, and apparently the monster had just been _hoarding_ meals. They’d rescued two people - unconscious yet breathing, carried back into town by Scott and Isaac, with a recently awakened Lydia looping an arm over Allison’s shoulder - but it’s still unnerving finding a wendigo so far to the west. The creature is from Cree mythology, and the whole reason it got the jump on them and nabbed Lydia in the first place was because, despite the evidence, Stiles didn’t think they’d find one so far outside of Minnesota or Michigan.

Jackson stands guard in front of Stiles as the young man works on the spell that will finally put an end to the wendigo, send the creature up in flames and end it for good. It’s complicated, and he needs to focus, but part of him can’t help being distracted when one of his friends goes sailing past his head and into the trunk of the tree behind him. Erica grunts from the ground, and spends a few seconds blinking, trying to stop the world from spinning.

“Any time now, Stilinski!” Jackson yells.

“Patience is a virtue,” Stiles snarkily shoots back, trying to concentrate. The tips of his fingers start to smoke.

The wendigo, keen sense of smell honing in on the beginning of what is really it’s only weakness, stops, grunts, then starts charging at Jackson and Stiles.

Jackson, snarling, charges at the monster in return, but gets slapped out of the way like he’s nothing more than a ragdoll. Stiles would laugh if he wasn't next on the wendigo’s hit list.

This is when Stile starts to panic. To be fair, it’s a valid response to his situation. Jackson just got his werewolf ass beat; what on Earth could Stiles do to the creature before he’s brained against the closest tree?

Instead of ramming into Stiles, however, the wendigo _picks him up_ , lifts him into the air, and proceeds to roar directly in Stiles’ face.

Let it never be said that Stiles can’t work under pressure. The tips of his fingers start to light up, the step that happens right after the smoke and right before the great fireball that’s incoming.

Not everyone else seems to have gotten the message, however. They’re too keen on saving Stiles from being monster chow to notice how his fingers are lighting up more and more with each passing second.

“No!” he tries to tell them. “Stay away! I’m gonna-”

But Derek and Erica are already in the air, leaping toward him, and the spell is too far gone for Stiles to stop without it backfiring and possibly killing him, so he does what he has to; he wraps his hands around the grip the wendigo has on his middle, closes his eyes, turns his face away, and braces for impact.

It’s _not_ a small explosion.

Stiles is flung a good twenty feet backwards. Mercifully, there are no trees that break his fall, but the forest floor isn’t exactly the softest landing, either. The wind is knocked out of him, and he’s more than certain he’s bruised at least half of his ribs. Should breathing hurt this bad?

He's also pretty sure he's _wet_ , his clothing soaked through, and, quite frankly, he doesn't want to give _that_ any more thought.

His vision is still swimming when Derek’s blurry face comes into view. He knows it’s Derek because of the dark scruff on his chin, and from the fact that, suddenly, not everything is excruciating. Werewolf mojo was handy sometimes.

When Stiles finally manages a breath, he pats Derek on the bicep. “Thanks,” he croaks out, and he realizes his throat hurts, likely from smoke inhalation.

“Do we need to take you to the hospital?” Derek asks. He trusts Stiles to tell him the truth.

“I don’t think so. No bleeding, no cuts. I’m a little sore where he picked me up, and where I landed, but I think I’m good. I do, however, I reserve the right to change my mind at a later time.”

Stiles thinks he hears Derek huff a laugh as the werewolf helps him stand, but he can’t be sure. His ears are still slightly ringing.

Everyone else seems okay. Where Erica’s clothes aren’t covering her up, her skin is practically soot black in most places, but she’s standing upright on her own, so Stiles surmises that she must be alright. There’s a little blood on the side of Jackson’s head, but it doesn’t look like it’s still flowing. Boyd’s got a fat lip and a black eye that will likely clear up in an hour or two.

All things considered, the entire ordeal wasn’t half bad.

Once they make sure the wendigo’s remains are actually either burnt or scattered, they double-back to the cave it had been hiding in to check it over one last time. None of the wolves hear a heartbeat or smell anything other than dead mice and monster bile, so, together, they slowly amble toward where they’d entered the forest. Stiles calls Scott on his cell as soon as he has adequate bars, and Scott is happy to let everyone know that the victims will make a full recovery. A park ranger will be by the hospital in the morning to talk about their nearly deadly encounter with a ‘bear.’

Lydia asks, quite curtly, if the thing is dead, and Stiles is delighted to tell her that he blew it up.

“Good,” she replies. “I have five stitches above my right eyebrow, and my Gucci handbag has a bite taken out of it.”

Next on the call list is Stiles’ dad, who answers the phone with a concerned, “what was it this time?”

“Wendigo,” Stiles says easily, like it’s _such_ a common occurrence. “I blew it up.”

“No one died, right? No victims?”

“No victims, werewolf or otherwise. The two people it nabbed are in the hospital with Scott. I’m assuming Melissa is there, or that Scott will call her with an update.”

“Proud of you, son. Not too hurt, are you?”

“I’m good.”

“You nearly _blew yourself up_ , Stiles,” Derek grouses from beside him.

“You nearly _what_?” The sheriff sounds horrified.

“Traitor!” he snaps, smacking at Derek’s shoulder, though he knows it does little good. It’s more to relieve his frustration than anything.

“ _Stiles,"_ his dad warns.

“Okay, so, the thing picked me up, but I had already completed the spell, and I couldn’t really cancel it out or _I’d_ explode, so I did my best.”

There’s a long silence on the other side of the phone.

“No broken bones,” Stiles sighs. “Nothing is twisted or sprained. I have a headache, I’m really dirty, and my left ear is ringing a little bit. _I’m fine_.”

The sheriff signs. “How many times do I have to tell you to _be careful?_ ”

“I was being careful! I was being as careful as I could be!”

Another aggravated sigh from the other end of the call. “Derek,” he says, knowing full well that how good werewolf hearing is. “We had a deal.”

Derek takes Stiles’ phone out of his hand without asking. “Sorry, sir. Jackson was guarding Stiles while he worked on casting the spell, but the creature could smell the smoke and charged. We tried to stop it, but _two of us at a time_ could barely slow it down.”

Stiles watches as Derek’s face contorts a little. “Yes, sir. I know.”

Rolling his eyes, Stiles picks up his pace, walking in front of everyone as they near the Jeep. Isaac is suddenly at his side as he hears Derek start to say something else to his dad, but whatever is said is covered up when Isaac touches his elbow and speaks. “I think you should let someone else drive.”

Stiles huffs a sigh. “I’m fine, dude.”

Isaac’s grip tightens, effectively stilling any further movement. “Stiles, I can _smell_ the adrenaline rolling off of you. You’re going to crash soon, and I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be behind the wheel.”

Seeing his point, Stiles fishes his keys out of his pocket and holds them out toward Isaac.

Derek, however, is the one that intercepts them. He gives Stiles back his phone with his other hand.

“Pack sleepover,” he announces, rounding behind the vehicle and climbing in the driver’s seat.

“You tell my dad?” Stiles asks as he pulls himself into the passenger’s seat.

Next to the Jeep, Jackson starts up his car as Erica and Boyd crawl into the back.

“Yeah. He said he’s not going to be home until late morning anyway, so it’s probably a good idea you're with people tonight. We need to make sure you don’t have a concussion, or go into shock.”

Stiles sighs. He hates being so _squishy_. He texts Scott that everyone is going back to the house before he slips his phone into his pocket.

Halfway through the drive, he starts rubbing at his temples. The headache he’s sporting is starting to turn into a migraine, and he’s _not_ looking forward to coming down from his adrenaline rush _and_ dealing with sensitivity to light and sound at the same time.

Derek, however, seems to read his mind, and reaches over his right hand, gripping Stiles’ bare wrist with his dirty fingers.

“You’ve got wendigo gross on you,” Stiles laughs, like it’s somehow funny, like he’s somehow _not_ completely covered in it himself. His laugh trails out into a contented sigh as Derek seeps his pain from him.

“I could _stop_ ,” Derek threatens.

“You wouldn’t _dare,_ ” he shoots back.

“You’re right,” Derek says, giving him the side-eye. “You’d bitch to much if I did.”

That earns a full laugh from Stiles. “Watch it, mister; _I'm_ the funny one around here.”

“First time I'm hearing about it.”

Stiles rolls his eyes and grins.

Back at the house, Erica and and Boyd claim the downstairs shower, while Jackson uses the one on the first floor. Stiles hurts and is gross, but he doesn't mind not getting first dibs on the shower; he's still thrumming from the fight, and standing still in a confined space doesn't sound too good right now. He still washes up a bit in the mudroom, though, leaning over the huge apron sink. He scrubs his arms all the way up to his biceps, then makes sure to wash the grit and guts from his face and neck. He rummages in the hamper and pulls out an already dirty sleep shirt and pair of sweatpants, knowing there’s no use in changing into clean clothes now if he still needs a shower.

After he's dried off and redressed, he walks into the kitchen and starts cooking. Bacon and sausage on the griddle, waffles in the waffle iron, hash browns in the oven, and as many eggs as he can scramble together in the frying pan on the top of the stove. Cooking is a mindless task, almost meditative, and it helps Stiles when he's still keyed up but not tired enough to come down.

After a while, Derek walks into the kitchen. “Scott and the others just pulled up,” he informs Stiles, surveying the kitchen and the litany of cooked food. “You wanna jump in the shower?”

Stiles shakes his head. “After this batch of waffles is done, food's ready. I'll shower when I'm done.”

Derek gives him a funny look but doesn't press the matter.

Breakfast for dinner is one of the things Stiles knows how to cook ridiculously well. Even Isaac is jealous of his hashbrown game, unable to get the right ratio of crispy to soft, no matter how many times Stiles demonstrates for him.

Cooking for werewolves is not small affair. With the exception of Lydia and Allison, everyone heaps food onto their plates like it's the last meal they'll ever eat. Boyd has an entire separate plate for waffles _alone,_ Derek eats a third of the bacon by himself, and Erica shovels hashbrowns into her mouth like she's trying to beat a world record.

Stiles doesn’t eat much. He never does, when his this keyed up. He can’t help it; any food he eats churns in his stomach, threatens to make a second appearance. Honestly, he can’t really tell if he’s even hungry or not. In the morning he definitely will be, but at the moment, he’s still too tense to tell. He manages to choke down a strip of bacon and some hashbrowns, and sips a bit of water just to chase the dryness in his mouth away.

Scott and Allison take the downstairs shower, while Lydia takes the free one on the first floor. Derek’s helping Stiles clean up their mess when he pauses and turns his head slightly. Stiles watches as Derek purses his lips. “Afraid you’re not gonna have any hot water left?” Stiles teases over his shoulder, elbow-deep in suds as he scrubs the plates from the waffle iron.

“I told them to let you take your shower next,” comes the reply, and Derek sounds annoyed.

Stiles shrugs. “It’s fine. I’d rather finish this first, anyway.”

By the time they finish with the dishes, Derek tells Stiles that the others are still in the shower, but he’s welcome to use the one attached to Derek’s bedroom.

His eyebrows do little to hide his surprise. “You never let anyone in your bathroom, dude. It’s fine, you don’t have to make an exception. I’ll just wait.”

“I wouldn’t tell you to use it if I wasn’t okay with it.”

Stiles rubs at his eyes. He isn’t coming down quite yet, but his body feels heavy, like he’s physically tired, but mentally incapable of feeling it at the moment. “I was just gonna use the one in the basement. All my clothes I have here are dirty, hence the PJs I’m sure you can _smell_. I’ll need to start a load in the washer before I clean up.”

Derek rolls his eyes, like he knows Stiles is avoiding _something_. “Go upstairs. Put your dirty clothes outside my bathroom door, and I'll throw your stuff in with everyone else’s. I’ll bring you something to sleep in.”

Knowing that arguing with Derek when hes this tired is like arguing with a brick wall, Stiles relents, shrugging and nodding. “Yeah. Yeah, alright. Thanks.”

The stairs take Stiles longer to climb than he feels they should. His feet feel heavy, like the fabric of his socks are somehow weighing him down. By the time he’s opening the door to Derek’s room, he’s breathing a little heavily. He doesn’t feel well; what little he ate earlier is threatening to revolt. Stiles turns on the shower to warm up the water stream, strips, puts his dirty clothes outside the door like Derek had told him, and uses the cup next to the sink to gulp down a glass of water. If he  _does_ end up throwing up, throwing up with a little water in his stomach is better than throwing up bile and what little food he managed to eat.

Hot water feels like heaven on his skin. He washes his hair twice - he’ll buy more shampoo for Derek if the guy raises a fuss about it - but avoids using Derek’s loofah to wash his own body. He’d nabbed a washcloth from under the counter before he’d hopped in the shower, and uses that to scrub up with Derek’s lightly-scented cherry-almond body wash.

When he’s done and mostly dried off, he peeks out the bathroom door and finds a neatly folded stack of clean clothing for him to wear, just like Derek had said, sitting on the corner of Derek’s bed. He dresses, slowly, his limbs still heavy, but now they are starting to shake, just a little.

He doesn’t mean to, but there’s only so much mental and physical exhaustion Stiles can take, and his knees start to shake as much as his hands. He pitches forward and falls to the soft comfort of Derek’s bed. It’s a weird angle, with one arm jammed underneath his chest from where he’d tried to catch himself, and his legs from his knees down are hanging off the bed completely, but it’s most comfortable Stiles has been in a long time. He takes a deep breath in through his nose, and even though he’s not wolf, he stills smells the pungent scent that belongs solely to Derek - deep forest, rain, and spice.

Stiles closes his eyes, just for a second, _just for a second_ , before he feels himself being moved by broad hands.

He jerks awake, not having meant to have dozed off in the first place, and rapidly blinks his eyes to try to get his eyes to refocus faster in the dark of the room.

“Sorry,” he tiredly slurs, wiping a little bit of drool form the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand.

Above him, he hears Derek let out a gentle huff of a laugh. “It’s fine.”

Derek places one of his hands to the small of Stiles’ back, ushering him back down to the comfort of the bed.

“No, no, it’s okay,” Stiles says. “I can go sleep on the couch.”

But Derek is already pulling the covers up to his chin, and Stiles doesn’t even realize he’s laid back down completely until Derek crawls under the covers next to him. “I said it’s fine.”

And the weirdest thing is that Stiles - because he knows every tone Derek’s voice can take - _believes_ him. So he does the only thing he can; he closes his eyes and lets sleep overcome him again.


	2. Chapter 2

The next day at school is long and grueling, and Stiles knows that no one in the pack has gotten more than about four hours of sleep, because that’s as much as _he_ managed.

And boy, do they _look it_. Scott’s shirt in on inside out, and Allison and Erica had forgone any makeup completely, opting to throw their hair up in messy buns and be done with it. Boyd’s eyelids don’t make it higher than half mast through the entire day, and Stiles is pretty sure Jackson actually falls asleep for a few seconds with his eye open at lunch.

Except Lydia of course, who's hair and makeup, as always, look flawless. For that, Stiles suspects witchcraft, but he is _way_ too tired to make a sarcastic comment about it.

When he gets home, his dad’s cruiser is gone, and there’s a note on the fridge:

_Stiles,_

_Marche called in - his wife went into labor a week early, so I’m covering. I won’t be home until after midnight. Money for pizza is on the table. If you need me, call me at the station._

_Sorry kiddo._

_Love you,_

_-dad_

Stiles gorans. His dad is already overworked as it is, but Stiles had been looking forward to hanging out with his old man that night. The Mets were playing, and there was a box of brownie mix in the cupboard that he’d been looking forward to surprising his dad with.

But, most of all, after last night, Stiles doesn’t want to be alone. He’d come down hard, but it wasn’t nearly what he’d expected. Yeah, near-death experiences were a normal day-to-day occurrences for him, given who he associates with, but usually Stiles can count, to the minute, the moment minor panic attacks set in. Usually he’s home and can deal with them on his own, or is in one of the soundproof bathrooms at the pack house. But last night, nothing had come. Stiles doesn’t know if he should be relieved or worried.

He digs the brownie mix out of the cupboard, vowing to make it up to his dad, before grabbing his keys and backpack and heading back out the front door.

Derek is eating a bowl of cereal, and Stiles notes, somewhat resentful, that he looks like he’s slept a good twelve hours. The messy state of his hair and the fact that he’s still wearing what he’d crawled into bed wearing don’t do much to quell Stiles’ suspicious.

“You okay?” Derek asks after he swallows a spoonful.

Stiles shrugs. “Dad got called out, won’t be back until late. I didn’t want to be alone.”

Derek nods, then turns his attention back to the TV, knowing when Stiles needs both space and company. Stiles knows how little the idea makes sense, but he suspects that Derek, out of everyone in the pack, knows what that feeling is like.

Slinging his backpack over one of the dining room chairs, Stiles makes a b-line straight for the kitchen and gets to work making brownies. Just like last night, cooking is cathartic, relaxing in a strangely active way. He hears Boyd and Erica come through the front door when he pops the uncooked brownies in the oven, and smiles knowing that he, Derek and the two of them will likely eat the entire pan, and hear complaints about it from everyone else who didn’t get any, mostly because the house will smell like brownies well into the night. He does the dishes as the brownies cook, then pulls his lit book from his bag and reads the chapter he was assigned as homework as they finish.

The timer goes off, Stiles pulls the brownies from the oven, then pulls out four saucers from the cupboard as the brownies cool. He unloads a scoop of ice cream on each one, then divides the brownies into squares and heaps several on each plate, nevermidning how hot the gooey treats are. He leaves a few squares in the pan, even though he knows Erica will hunt them down as soon as she finishes all but licking her plate clean.

He plops all four saucer on a tray, then pours four small glasses of milk for everyone. With the milk put away, he carries the tray into the living room, observing how Erica and Boyd perk up as soon as he enters the room.

“Did you make brownies?” Erica asks excitedly, even though she still sounds a little tired.

Stiles affectionately rolls his eyes. “You know I made brownies, you could smell them when you walked in.”

She just grins at him sweetly as she stuffs a brownie square in her mouth. “Take a spoon; you weren’t raised in a barn.”

“Yes, _mom_ ,” she sweetly mocks, winking up at him.

Derek starts coughing on his brownie, and Stiles shoots him a look. “Chew your food.”

Erica cackles, despite the spoon in her mouth.

\---------

All is quiet, all is normal for three days. For three whole days, Stiles sleeps well, watches baseball with his dad while they eat dinner, and then a gaggle? - a herd? - a posse? - of gnomes start stirring shit up in the forest, and there’s only so many mangled deer carcasses animal control can pick up off the side of the road before they start to get suspicious.

So, into the woods they go. It’s a theme for them. Hell, at this point, it’s a lifestyle.

The gnomes don’t take too well to being told to leave.

Apparently, Stiles thinks as he punts one of them a good fifteen feet, they don’t take too well to manners, either, having just started hissing and clawing and yelling after Derek had been polite enough to even use the word ‘please’ when he’d told them to get lost.

It’s not a good fight.

It’s not a hard fight, given that the little buggers are hardly ten inches tall, but _it’s not a good fight._ Despite their awkward shape and their weird, stubby little legs, the gnomes are fast. Their claws, while small, are sharp like a kittens.

The entire altercation only lasts several minutes, _tops_.

At one point, Stiles is knocked to the ground and four gnomes clamber over and start scratching the shit out of any part they can reach of him, but two of them go flying when Derek rushes over, grabs them by the back of their grimy necks and _flings_ them into the distance. The other two scamper away, retreating with the rest of them.

Derek roars, and that’s that.

Stiles’ clothes are in tatters, and his skin is positively _on fire_ from the multitude of scratches across his entire body. Only several of them are bleeding much more than a paper cut might, but it’s not the deepness of the cuts that hurts, it’s the sheer _quantity_ of them.

Derek stretches his hand and helps him stand. “You should compete in the Olympics,” Stiles smirks.

Derek rolls his eyes. “They don’t have an event for gnome-hurling.”

“No, but I bet it’s pretty similar to the shot put.”

Derek doesn’t say anything in return. Stiles notices how tightly clenched his hands are at his side, so decides not to say anything else.

Stiles drives back with Derek in the Camaro, since Derek had been the one to pick him up from his house on their way to confront the gnomes in the first place. No one nearly died this time - though you’d think with the way Erica shrieked when one of the little bastards had dared to cut her face that was up for debate. So, in short, Stiles isn’t as shaken as he normally is after a fight with the supernatural.

But, halfway home his sweat starts to make the numerous cuts across his body sting like a mother fucker, and Derek looks less than pleased to hear him whine in the passenger’s seat. The were’s knuckles are practically white they’re gripping the steering wheel so tight, and Stiles bites the inside of his cheek to keep from crying out just so he doesn’t annoy Derek any further.

To his surprise, Derek doesn’t take him back to his house, but instead to the pack house, for which Stiles is slightly confused. “Dude, I’m good, I just need a shower. You can drop me off back home and-”

Derek growls, and Stiles wants to roll his eyes, but moving makes his skin sting, so he just shuts his mouth. He supposes it’s good for the pack to come together after a fight, even if the rest of them were no longer really sporting any physical evidence that there had even been one in the first place. Plus, Derek had gone to Costco yesterday, which meant he’d restocked on junk food, something that Stiles liked to overindulge in after fighting any kind of nasties, supernatural or otherwise.

As soon as the car is parked, Derek is out and on the other side of the car. He wrenches the passenger’s side door open, and impatiently ushers Stiles to stand. And, hey, Stiles gets it - if his Jeep had such a nice interior, he wouldn’t want anyone bleeding on it, either.

Derek, with a strangely gentle hand on the small of Stiles’ back, ushers Stiles past the rest of the pack who’ve only just parked, into the house, up the stairs, and into his bedroom.

“What’s on your mind, buddy?” Stiles starts, but Derek ignores him, shuts the door, and starts rummaging through his dresser. He pulls out a spare change of clothes - the same set he’s given Stiles last time - and tosses them at him.

“Take a shower. Now.”

Stiles’ eyebrows do a complicated maneuver on his forehead, trying to express his surprise and curiosity. “Uh, dude, what-”

“Everyone else can fight off infection. Gnome claws are dirty, and you look like you’ve gone ten rounds with a litter of rabid kittens. You’re human; you’re prone to infection. Take a shower, and make sure you scrub each and every cut.”

Stiles nods in understanding. He gets it. Being one of the humans in the pack can be advantageous at times, but mostly it just means everyone else worries about him more often than not. He walks into the bathroom and showers, carefully washing every cut he can. There are a few on his back he can’t see, but he’s flexible enough that he thinks he’s scrubbed them well enough. At least they don’t sting anymore, once he rinses off.

He dresses quickly, momentarily mourning the loss of _another_ pair of pants. He’s down to three pairs now. _Well,_ he surmises, _at least it wasn’t his phone again_. Jeans were cheaper to replace.

To his surprise, Derek is still in his room when Stiles is done. He’s toweling off his hair when Derek turns around, and he sees the reason Derek is still there; there’s a first-aid kit on the bed next to him.

Derek motions for Stiles to sit next to him. On his way, Stiles drops his towel in the hamper. When he’s on the bed, Derek wordlessly takes his hand in a gentle grip and examines him, starting at his wrist and working his way up his arm. Despite the clinical nature of what Derek is doing, Derek’s gentle ministrations help Stiles relax.

In the end, Stiles gets a few dollops of antiseptic cream under a few band-aids, and only two butterfly bandages on his cheek.

“All better?” he asks with a lopsided grin.

Derek meets his gaze, but doesn’t say anything.

Stiles feels like he might be missing something. “I’ll, uh, ask someone to give me a ride home. Thanks for patching me up, and-”

“I’ll take you home.”

Stiles hesitates. Now he _really_ feels like he’s missing something. “You sure?”

Derek nods. “Can you wait until I get out of the shower?”

Despite the strangeness of the entire situation, Stiles nods. If Derek wants to drive him home, he won’t complain; compared to everyone else, he’s the better driver anyway.

Derek doesn’t wait - he gets up, grabs a change of clothes, and pads softly into the bathroom.

Stiles sits on the bed, even after the water starts. He sighs, comfortable, at ease. He’s not sure if the TV is on downstairs; he doesn’t know exactly who followed him and Derek back to the pack house, but he’s enjoying the quiet all the same. His eyelids start to droop, and he thinks back to earlier in the week, when he’d spent the night in Derek’s bed. He doesn’t find it surprising that Derek has one of the most comfortable beds he’s ever had the fortune to try. The poor bastard had slept in the burnt-out husk of his family’s house, followed by an abandoned train depot. Stiles feels that the guy deserves whatever comforts he can get.

He lays down, intent to just relax until Derek is done the shower. The sheets smell the same as they had the other day, and he smiles against one of the pillows. Stiles might not be a wolf, but he still has a decent nose. He _likes_ the way Derek smells.

Stiles is roused from a nap he hadn’t intended to take to a gentle hand rubbing back and forth on the base of his skull. He isn’t pulled too far from sleep's grasp, doesn’t start or spring away. He likes the feeling; it’s relaxing, sweet. It reminds him of when he was little, when he’d fall asleep with his head in his mom’s lap and she’d run her fingers through his hair.

He cracks opens his eyes, but the only thing he sees is a black shirt stretched across broad shoulders. Stiles’ arms are curled up in front of him, and his knees are touching the knees of another.

“Der?” Stiles sleepily asks.

“Shh,” comes Derek’s reply.

The motion of Derek’s fingers at his hairline doesn’t cease.

Stiles is back to sleep within seconds.

He wakes again when the sun is up, jolted awake by the shrill sound of an alarm. Derek, whose limbs are entangled with his own, stretches back, reaches over to his bedside table and swipes across the screen of his phone.

“Come on,” Derek says through a yawn, throwing his feet over the opposite side of the bed. “I’ll take you home so you can change before school.”

Stiles stretches and nods, too tired to deal with making words.

The drive back to his house, oddly enough, isn’t awkward. Derek doesn’t bring up practically cuddling with Stiles all night, and since Stiles had, quite frankly, _liked it,_ he says nothing so as not to jinx it. Derek’s protective of his pack, no one would argue that. Stiles had been the only one that had received any kind of lasting damage, so to him, it made sense that Derek would want to keep an eye on him. Sure, a barrage of paper cuts and kitten-clawed swipes wasn’t going to put him in the hospital, but Derek _had_ fought four gnomes off of him when Stiles had fallen down.

Derek pulls up into the empty driveway, and tells Stiles, in a sleep-rough voice, to be careful.

Stiles rolls his eyes. “When am I ever?”

Derek grimaces in reply, and offers nothing else.

“Thanks for the ride, sourwolf,” he says as he gets out.

Derek waits until he’s inside the house before he backs out of the driveway.

It’s still an hour before he usually wakes up to get ready for school so Stiles, in the true teenage fashion, climbs his ass right into bed and falls back asleep.

He’s woken up by a few light taps on his door. “Time to wake up for school, Stiles,” his dad calls from just behind the door.

Stiles makes a non-committal noise and doesn’t bother to even open his eyes.

He hears his door swing open. “Stiles,” his dad calls, sounding slightly impatient. “Up.”

Knowing his dad won’t leave until Stiles is at least upright, he stands, then grabs at his sweatpants that start slipping down his hips.

“Those new PJs?” his dad asks. “They look a little big.”

Stiles bites his cheek. He’s still wearing Derek’s clothing. “Uh, my clothes got a little scratched up, so Derek lent me something since I don’t keep much at the pack house.”

When he looks up, his dad’s gaze is focused on his cheek, and Stiles reaches up to touch the stop, only to realize his dad is looking at the butterfly bandages on his cheek.

“What was it this time?”

The tension in Stiles' shoulder eases a little. Everything’s been simpler, now that his dad knows about all of the werewolf-slash-supernatural business that goes on in Beacon Hills. “Gnomes,” he replies back easily.

“Gnomes?” his dad asks, incredulously, eyebrows raised.

“Yup. Gnomes. About ten inches tall, look like they belonged in some old lady’s garden. Not really threatening. They took down a few deer to try and scare us, but against something that can actually fight back, they weren’t a challenge.”

“So the gouge in your face-”

“They knocked me down and got some cheap shots in, but we took care of ‘em.”

“You look tired.”

“I _feel_ tired.”

John regards him for a minute. “Let me give you a few bucks for a redcow.”

“Redbull, dad.”

“Yeah, get one of those, too.”

Stiles laughs, but his dad hands him a five-dollar bill and gives him a kiss on his forehead.

\---------

Stiles does end up getting a Redbull, even though he knows it’ll only make him crash pretty hard after school. Morning classes pass by without much ado, and lunch is square pizza and curly fries, so Stiles can’t complain.

Well, can’t complain about _that._

As soon as he sits down at his usual table, Erica is practically plastered to his back. She winds her arms around his shoulders and stuffs her face in his neck.

“You okay back there?”

Isaac sits next to him, close. A little _too_ close.

“Uhhh.”

“You smell like alpha,” Boyd helpfully provides.

 _Ah_. Stiles gets it now. Derek had tended to Stiles all night, or at least he surmises. He’d been too wrapped up in making sure that Stiles was okay, he hadn’t bothered to check on anyone else. His betas were a little attention-starved is all.

He reaches up and gives Erica a hug, or at least tries to, considering they aren’t exactly in prime hugging position. It’s the least he can do for hogging up all the alpha cuddles last night.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Buckle up, folks, shit gets kind of messed up in this chapter. I'm not joking. If you're worried, check the tags at the end.

Three weeks of quiet is all they get before something else starts terrorizing their town. Stiles is 100% certain that their little slice of California is the monster capital of the world, but he doesn’t know who to get into contact with in order to confirm it. He has a feeling the people at Guinness would just hang up on him, and, to be fair, he wouldn’t blame them if they did.

Stiles, Lydia, and, surprisingly, Peter end up staying awake until dawn, looking into the signs that the Supernatural Baddie of the Day is leaving (Stiles is looking into various trademark laws; it’s an ongoing endeavor). He feels like a restaurant; a different flavor of monster every day of the week. Soup du Jour, so to speak, but with more hair and teeth and homicidal tendencies. They don’t get much, considering they don’t have much to go on in the first place, but Stiles is fairly certain they are dealing with a skinwalker.

He’s got an hour to blow before school starts, but he knows that if he tries to catch a quick cat nap, he’ll end up sleeping until nightfall. He digs an energy drink from the back of the fridge, then sets to making food for everyone. They might not end up being as tired as he’s going to be by the end of the day, or even by lunch, but Stiles knows they were all out, securing the perimeter and looking for further clues until well into the wee hours of the morning, so he counts this as his good deed for the day.

His morning classes pass by in a blur, and lunch sneaks up on him quickly, which is just fine; the sooner the day is over, the sooner he can go home and catch up on his sleep. When the pack is present and accounted for at their usual lunch table, Stiles pulls the insulated lunch box from his backpack, unzips it, and starts doling out his delicious gifts to everyone. Scott gets a tupperware container of banana pudding - instant, just whisked with milk, nothing special - but the way Scott’s face lights up, one would think Stiles had handed him a gourmet, three-course meal. Boyd gets a pressed pastrami sandwich, complete with sauerkraut, and the man actually _smiles_. Isaac gets a turkey club - with bacon, of course. Allison and Jackson get salads, each with a hard boiled egg and other various goodies, including the rest of the bacon and halved cherry tomatoes, and Erica squeals with delight when Stiles presents her with a still-chilled chocolate milkshake. Lydia raises a perfectly-manicured eyebrow when Stiles slides a container of garlic hummus and a bag of carrot sticks across the table at her. She tilts her head when he then, making sure everyone else is entrapped with their own food, discreetly slides her a frozen Snickers bar, too.

Shit doesn’t go wrong until he’s on his way home from school.

He’s on the phone with Peter, arguing.

“There’s no way it’s _not_ a skinwalker,” he snaps for the third time in twenty minutes.

“There’s not enough evidence-” Peter cuts himself off. “I heard your heart skip around. What is it, Stiles?”

Stiles doesn’t cut the engine for the Jeep, just sits in the driveway, peering in through the front windows. “Someone’s in my house.”

He hears Peter curse, then the tell-tale sound of shuffling feet. “Don’t go in,” Peter warns, and Stiles can hear the Camaro roar to life on the other end. “Derek and I will be there in five minutes. Drive to Scott’s. Derek is calling your father and-”

Stiles drops the phone. It falls with a dull thud into the floor well of the Jeep, and while Peter’s voice can still quietly be heard shouting his name, Stiles tunes everything out.

The person inside of his house has turned around, fully facing the front window.

 _It’s his mom_.

Every instinct in him is screaming at Stiles to run, but he’s frozen to the spot.

His mom tilts her head and smiles - _just like she used to -_ and starts toward the door. When she opens it, she just keeps smiling at him, the freckles on her face in the exact same patterns Stiles remembers.

“Stiles!” he thinks he hears Derek’s voice call from somewhere, as if from far away.

“Mom?” he says, his voice cracking.

“Sweetie,” his mom calls out, motioning him to come closer. “Stiles, sweetie, come inside.”

His feet move without thought, as if he’s being pulled toward her. And why would he not want to go to her? She’s his _mother_.

When Stiles gets near the door, his mom steps aside, leaving him enough room to walk into the house. She closes the door behind her, careful to lock the deadbolt and handle both, before she turns to him and gifts him with a warm, welcoming smile.

“I’m so glad you’re home,” she says, opening her arms.

Stiles hesitates. There’s something there, in the back of his mind, trying to claw its way out, trying to warn him about something, but, for the life of him, Stiles can’t figure out _what_. Instead, after a moment, he falls into the circle of his mother’s arms, buries his face in her shoulder, and starts to cry.

“I love you, mom,” he weeps, the soft fabric of her shirt soaking up his tears.

“Oh, sweetie, I love you too.”

“ _Mom_ ,” he wails, his heart aching, feeling like it’s crumbling within the confines of his chest.

Something huge shatters the window, then moves to stand in the middle of the living room. Derek, shifted into his beta form, looms just on the other side of the couch.

Stiles’ mom shrieks, clings to her son.

“Stiles, get away from that thing,” Derek says past his fangs.

“No!” Stiles practically screams. “Derek, you can’t! She’s my mom, and-”

“She’s the skinwalker.”

It’s like time slows down for Stiles, everything in his vision coming to a lurching halt. He turns to face his mother, who he’s shielding with his body. He can hardly see past the tears swimming in his vision. The feeling in the back of his mind is back, the pin-pricks of tiny claws clamoring for ground at the base of his spine. This thing is casting some kind of spell to cloud his mind, using some kind of trick to try... try... everything starts to go fuzzy again.

“Mom?” Stiles rapidly blinks his eyes, as if sleepy.

Claudia looks at her son. “Don’t believe him, Stiles! It’s me, I’m here! I’m back.”

“Back-”

Everything comes back at once, all of the memories he’d spent years trying not to think of, memories of his mother wasting away in the hospital, of the gaunt look in her face when he was still allowed to visit her.

He swallows past the lump in his throat. “Mom-”

“Stiles, sweetie, don’t let them hurt me!”

“That’s not your mother, Stiles!” Derek shouts, breath heaving. “Snap out of it!”

Derek says that it’s not his mom, but Stiles can see the freckles and moles on her face and arms - beauty marks, she used to call them, so happy that she’d passed so many on to her son. Her eyes are the same color, her hair the same texture.

But, the feeling in the back of Stiles’ head, and Derek’s desperate words tell another story.

“What’s my name?” he asks her.

Claudia smiles. “Stiles.”

Stiles forces himself to take a step back, even though his mom tries to grasp at his shirt. “No, mom. What’s my _real name_?”

All hell breaks loose.

The woman in front of him no longer wears the face of his mother, and Stiles takes another step backward, tipping over the end of the couch in his effort to get away. His mother’s face _drips_ off, like melting wax, and sharp teeth and hideous features prove to everyone in the room that Stiles was right all along; a skinwalker stands in their midst.

Peter leaps out of seemingly nowhere, tackles the creature to the floor while Derek pulls Stiles’ tipped over from away from the couch. As soon as Stiles is a safe distance away, Derek steps forward, like he’s going to leap over the couch to join the fray, but he stops, dead.

“Stiles!” screams a voice, his mom’s voice. The creature may not be wearing Claudia’s face any longer, but she still sounds like his mom, and Stiles begins to shake and tremble, his mind going haywire. He knows the creature isn’t his mom, but the sound of her voice is exactly as he remembers it. He shuffles on his hands and feet, goes to stand, but Derek stops him. Stiles fights him, tries to shove Derek away, tries to move closer to his mother, who is screaming for him, begging for his help-

And then Stiles hears the snapping of a neck, and he drops to the floor like a stone.

 _The spell_ , he surmises, as the world crashes down around him. He no longer has trouble discerning whether or not the thing is his mother. Even so, the sound of her voice haunts him, shakes him down to the marrow of his bones, echoing throughout his head like thunder in a canyon.

He doesn’t register his body is being moved until he’s being buckled into the passenger’s seat of the Camaro, Derek practically climbing over the hood in his haste to get behind the wheel.

Stiles hiccups, not sure if he has strength enough to speak.

Everything gets worse as Stiles gets more distance between himself and his house. He’s still shaking, terrible full-body tremors that make his teeth chatter.

When Derek turns onto the road leading into the preserve, leading to the pack house, Stiles can’t keep silent any longer.

“We have to go back,” he says, shivering like he’s cold.

“No. There’s nothing for you.”

Stiles thrashes like a little kid, tries to unbuckle the seat belt. “I have to go back! I have to-”

“The connection’s broken since the thing is dead, but we need to get you away from its corpse; there could be lingering residual magic and-”

Stiles screams. He screams, and he screams, _and he screams_. He presses his hands to his face and wails, cries, sobs, because he doesn’t know how to stop, doesn’t know what else he can do.

He only notices they’ve stopped when Derek reaches across his chest to unbuckle him, picking him up in a bridal carry. He starts toward the house, and Stiles flings his arms around Derek’s neck, sobbing into the juncture of his neck and shoulders.

He’s still crying, but he’s quiet by the time Derek sets him down on his bed. He reaches down and pulls Stiles’ shoes off, then pushes him backward and forces him flat on the bed. Stiles raises his hands and wipes away his tears with his fingers, his eyes sore, unable to trust himself to open his mouth. He feels fingers at his waistband, and looks down to see Derek unzipping his pants, but the stern look on Derek’s face drives home the fact that all he’s doing is helping Stiles from falling apart. When his pants are undone, Derek tugs them off, then reaches up and practically man-handles Stiles under the covers.

It’s a good hiding place. Stiles practically rips the covers out of Derek’s hands, pulling them up and over his head, curling into the smallest shape he can manage.

The tears come again, fall down his face as he tries to keep from screaming again.

Everything hurts. _Everything_.

He feels Derek get into bed beside him. Large, warm hands coast down his spine, move along his hips, then wind themselves around his middle.

“I can’t - I can’t -”

“Shh,” Derek says, his breath hot against the back of Stiles’ neck. He feels one of Derek’s hand snake up around him, coming to rest with the flat of his palm over Stiles’ heart. “It’s alright.”

“ _Derek_ ,” Stiles weeps. “It was _her. It was her._ ”

“No. No it wasn’t, Stiles. It was just a skinwalker, wearing her face. It was trying to hurt you, trying to break you. It wasn’t her, it wasn’t really your mom.”

Stiles tries, desperately, to get a hold on something, anything.

“Breathe with me,” Derek says, as if reading his mind. “In-”

Stiles inhales shakily.

“Out-”

His breath stutters, but he exhales.

“In - good, Stiles, you’re doing so well - and out-”

Derek breathes with him until he’s no longer shaking, until he’s no longer crying. Derek’s instructions eventually cease, and they fall into a tense silence.

He thinks Derek’s asleep before he dares to whisper. “It went after me because I’m the weakest.”

The way Derek tenses lets Stiles know he wasn’t as asleep as previously thought. “Stiles-”

“It’s what they do. They go after the weakest member of a group. They want an easy meal. And it almost had me, Derek. All it had to do was dress up like my dead mom and-”

“ _Don’t._ ” It’s an alpha command. Even though Stiles can’t see Derek’s eyes, even though the command doesn’t affect him because he’s not a wolf, Stiles knows it for what it is. “You’re not the weakest. You’re not. Skinwalkers go after what they _perceive_ as the weakest, and, in this case, since you’re one of the only humans, it picked you. It could have just as easily picked Allison-”

“But it didn’t-”

“Because she’s had more combat training than you, and even creatures other than werewolves know to steer clear of the Argents. You were the safest bet; your dad isn’t always home, so there was plenty of time for it to look around your house. You’re not the weakest, Stiles.”

Stiles doesn’t know what to say, so he doesn’t say anything at all.

Derek speaks for him, instead. “I’m going to let your dad know what happened.”

Stiles inhales, panic starting to gather at the base of his spine.

“Shh, not the details. Just that something tried to get to you, but we took care of it. I’m going to let him know you need to take the next few days off, too. I want you to stay here.”

“The window-”

“Peter will take care of it. Everything will be fixed by the time you go back.”

“Okay,” he concedes, finally, sighing. There's no fight left in him. Everything is heavy; his thoughts, his limbs, his heart.

The grip Derek has on him tightens, and he falls asleep from pure exhaustion not long after.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: severe panic attack, violence, gore, kind of all-around-gross of the face-melting variety


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No triggers or warnings for this chapter. You might need to brush your teeth afterward, though.

Stiles wakes up in Derek’s bed, warm, comfortable, and feeling like he’d consumed his weight in alcohol the night before. Not a drop of liquor had passed his lips, but _damn_ , what he wouldn’t do for a stiff drink right about _now_.

Images of his mother’s melting face flash before his eyes.

Groaning, he pulls the comforter over his head, willing himself to completely forget about the world around him.

He hears the door to Derek’s bedroom open. Though he knows he can’t trick werewolf senses into thinking he’s asleep when he’s not, he ignores the intruder all the same.

“You hungry?” comes Derek’s voice.

Stiles contemplates staying completely still until Derek leaves him alone.

“You need to eat something.”

Throwing the covers back with a dramatic flare, Stiles tries to glare Derek into leaving him alone.

“You’re not intimidating when you’ve got bed head.” Stiles can hear the softness, the weighted measure of Derek’s tone.

Stiles rolls his eyes. “I’m not really ever intimidating, am I?”

Derek doesn’t say anything, but, well, _does he have to_?

Stiles kicks off the covers. “I’m not hungry.”

“You just woke up. You’ll be hungry in ten minutes.”

“I _said_ -”

“I heard what you said. I’m just choosing to completely disregard it. Get up and get dressed. We’re going to get food.”

Stiles scrunches up his face and mimics the last sentence out of Derek’s mouth with heavily sarcastic overtones. He doesn’t see Derek roll his eyes when he shuts the door, but Stiles knows that’s what he did.

Even though he doesn’t want to, even though some part of him, a little voice in the back of his head, is crying at him to just crawl back into bed, he knows that, like Derek said, he’ll be hungry in ten minutes, so he throws his feet over the side of the bed and pulls on his pants.

Since it’s winter, it’s already dark out, despite it hardly being past five. It’s a little disorienting, going to bed when it’s light and waking up when it’s dark - he must have slept an entire day - and Stiles pulls on one of Derek’s shirts over his tee because he knows it’s going to be cold, and he can’t find the flannel he’d been wearing the day before.

When he goes downstairs, Derek is waiting by the front door. When he looks up, he pauses, and Stiles sees his nostrils flare.

“I couldn’t find my shirt, and it’s cold out,” Stiles says, not offering up an apology. If Derek wanted him to get out of bed, he’d have to deal with the consequences. Okay, so _maybe_ Stiles got a little grumpy when his blood sugar dipped. Who _doesn’t_ get a case of the hangries every now and then?

Derek doesn’t offer a rebuttal. His eyes meet Stiles’ for just a moment before his tongue darts out to wet his lips, but he says nothing.

Stiles supposes that Derek just feels sorry for him, after what happened yesterday. Even so, he knows better than to push too much. Well, _usually._ He doesn’t ask where Derek is taking him after they get into the Camaro, and he’s not surprised in the least when Derek swats his hand when he goes to change the radio station.

When the pull into a little hole in the wall diner Stiles _knows_ has amazing curly fries, he bites the inside of his cheek. He doesn’t want Derek’s pity. He doesn’t. But, then again, _curly fries._

They order and eat in comfortable silence, just the two of them.

“This is nice,” Stiles eventually observes between bites.

Derek pauses in his chewing and raises an eyebrow.

“Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice hanging out with the whole pack, but sometimes it’s nice just to get away. You and I don’t get a lot of one on one time, you know?” He sucks his milkshake straw back into his mouth.

Derek’s gaze flickers to Stiles’ lips for a moment, then moves down to half-eaten pickle spear on his plate. He swallows, then nods, like it’s an afterthought.

Stiles doesn’t push his luck. To be completely honest, his head is still a mess from the whole mess with the skinwalker, but he appreciates Derek’s company along with the distraction of being out of the house. Out of everyone in the pack, Derek is the one to understand what it’s like to lose family before their time better than anyone else.

Stiles finishes his curly fries with slightly less weight on his shoulders.

He’s surprised when, after the bill is paid and he’s so full it’s almost uncomfortable to buckle back into the passenger’s seat of the Camaro, Derek turns away from the direction the pack house is in and instead heads further into town. Again, Stiles doesn’t comment on it. It’s nice to be out of the house, away from the confines of his own thoughts. And, well, he can think of worse company than Derek Hale.

Derek takes a turn, and they pull into a parking lot. Stiles is at once at full attention.

He shoots Derek a suspicious look. “We’re at the movies.”

“Yup,” Derek says, turning off the car and unbuckling his seat belt.

“You _hate_ the movies.”

Derek snorts. “I hate the way movie theaters smell, but I don’t hate the movies.”

Stiles is suspicious as he follows Derek out of the car and toward the ticket window. When Derek purchases two tickets for the latest Marvel movie, the one that Stiles wasn’t planning on seeing until next weekend, his stomach does a very ungracious flip flop. “Are you serious right now?”

Derek turns and holds out a ticket for him, but when Stiles goes to grab it, it’s pulled out of the way.

“You get this,” Derek says, slowly, carefully, “if you can hold in the commentary.”

Stiles wilts. “You might as well ask me to pull the moon from the sky, dude. You _know_ that’s not going to happen.”

Derek is still, unnervingly so, and for a moment Stiles worries he won’t get to see the movie at all. But, Derek eventually offers the ticket. “Just try to keep it to a minimum.”

It’s a good movie. And, because Derek was kind enough to pay for dinner and the movies like he was Stiles’ _date_ , Stiles tries his best to keep his running commentary internal. There are a few instances where he can’t help but sputter indignantly at the screen, but Derek doesn’t look like he minds _too much._

Stiles doesn’t say anything when Derek bypasses the turn toward his house on the way home. It’s late when the pull up to the pack house, and Stiles, despite not being awake for all that long, feels sluggish and sleepy. He lets Derek guide him into the house and up the stairs, reveling in the warmth the hand on the small of his back provides.

In the quiet of Derek’s bedroom, Stiles pulls of Derek’s shirt and hands it to him, then turns on his heel and starts for the door.

Derek’s fingers, light as a feather, wrap around his wrist and cause him to pause.

It must be a trick of the light, because Stiles almost thinks that Derek looks bashful, timid. Derek doesn’t speak - for as long as Stiles has known him, Derek’s never been a man of many words - but even Stiles keeps his mouth shut, now. Maybe he’s still coming down from the conflict of the day before, or maybe he’s still struggling to stay out of a food coma, since, after their meal at the diner, Stiles had consumed an entire bucket of popcorn by himself. Either way, Derek lightly jerks his head in the direction of his bed, and it takes Stiles a moment for his brain to catch up. He offers Derek a gentle smile in return, then tugs his arm free and toes off his shoes. His jeans go next, but he keeps his shirt on.

Stiles climbs into the bed, surprised to see Derek in a similar state of dress as he, slipping under the covers of the other side. For not the first time that night, they fall into a comfortable silence.

It’s short lived.

As Stiles is left in the quiet of the room, even with Derek’s even breathing beside him, his mind starts to race, and, unbidden, pictures of his mother flash in the back of his mind. He feels hot and cold at the same time, gooseflesh creeping over his skin as he tries to keep his breath even so as not to disturb-

Derek reaches out and cards the fingers of one hand through his hair, and Stiles is almost overwhelmed at how quickly and easy it makes him relax, how much his body unclenches for something so simple as _a touch._

“I could hear you thinking,” Derek says after a moment, his fingers still running through Stiles’ hair.

Stiles sighs and closes his eyes.

Derek’s fingers don’t pause in their gentle, comforting ministrations.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In exchange for making all of you wait so god damn long while I rewrote this chapter -six- times, have almost 10k of my verboseness and some smut. Chapter warnings for this chapter are: mild violence and sexytimes.

Every now and then, Stiles does something that blows the doubt of being a burden to the pack from even his own mind.

This time, it’s not a supernatural creature come to wreak havoc on their sleepy little down.

_Oh, no._

It’s hunters with a grudge against the Argents, pissed off that they dare work _with_ werewolves and other various creatures of the night. Nevermind that they are keeping innocent people safe while doing so. Nope, they don’t care, the bunch of... racists? Speciest? Stiles isn’t sure about that one. He’ll have to look it up later. You know, when he’s _not_ lobbing handfuls of fireballs at a bunch of gun-waving psychopaths.

They’d gotten the drop on Derek _and_ Allison, demanding the rest of the pack surrender or they’d never see the two of them again.

In less than three hours, Erica and Boyd had figured out where the hunters were holding their kidnapped comrades - at an old abandoned lumber mill just outside of town. Isaac had scouted an old runoff ditch that was covered with enough vegetation to hide an approach.

Stiles’ plan was bold and brash, just like most of what his brain manages to concoct. Peter, Isaac, Jackson, Erica, and Boyd would all take the front entrance, with Chris following behind, fully armed though concealing most of it, making it look as though he’d rounded up the rest of the pack so he could exchange them for his daughter. Meanwhile, Lydia and Stiles would traverse up the ditch and into the back of the mill, and, while the hunters were distracted, they’d rush the place with flash-bang grenades and temporary paralysis spells.

Like most of Stiles’ plans, however, it blows up in their face.

Beautifully.

Stiles has a gun pointed to his head, the runoff ditch having not concealed him as well as he’d originally planned, but thankfully the hunter had only seen him, not Lydia, who was smart enough to not follow directly behind him but a good ways back. He sees Lydia sneak into the mill behind them and, from behind the hunter, she lobs a flash-bang into the room. But Stiles isn’t quick enough to close his eyes or cover his ears before the damn thing goes off. The next thing he knows, he’s on the ground, his ears are ringing something fierce, and there’s a heavy and incredibly blurry weight on top of him.

Never let someone tell you that getting punched in the face doesn’t hurt.

Stiles gets nailed right in the head, and instantly knows from a scant two hits that he’s going to be sporting a beautiful black eye, a split lip, and one hell of a headache in less than five minutes.

The weight is suddenly wrenched from atop him, and Stiles gasps in a shuddering breath. His left eye is already swollen shut, and despite the little white dancing spots in the vision of his good eye, the room is rapidly coming into better focus.

Turns out Derek, half-shifted, was what managed to take care of the hunter that was wailing on him. The other hunters, however, don’t look as though they are taking too kindly to it at all, and Stiles counts four, five, _six_ hunters with their guns trained on the panting were. Stiles guesses that the only reason they haven’t fired on Derek is the fact that the were has his hand around their buddie’s throat. He doesn't even know where Chris and Allison are at this point, let alone the rest of the pack.

So, Stiles does something monumentally stupid.

Which, you know, is kind of par for the course for him.

Reaching deep inside, he pulls at the spark of magic within him.

 _Please_ , he begs the universe, a heartbeat before he springs into motion.

Every single hunter has their guns ripped from their hands. The guns shoot into the air, hover a few feet above each of the hunters, then, in a move that Stiles impresses even himself with, they fall apart, piece by piece.

And that’s not even the best part.

After the gun pieces fall to the earth, the hunters themselves start to hover, too. A few of them start cursing, but they have nothing to retaliate with; apparently, none of them had realized that along with hanging out with the local weres, the Argents now had a resident mage in their midsts.

So, with the hunters stuck, hovering a few feet above the ground, Stiles cracks his knuckles and decides to show them all how a spark likes to party. He grins, because he knows this isn't going to be something they're going to forget.

With his palms facing out, Stiles digs deeper still, pulls from the depths of his spark. Fire caresses his fingers, then accumulates in the palms of his hands. With a smirk and a throbbing head, he lets loose.

Each and every hunter gets a fireball to the chest, which inevitably launches them all backward. Some of them are lucky and fly into nearby walls or beams. Others, not so much, like the guy who gets launched out an old, half-broken window. Stiles hears him yelling until it slowly fades away, like a car speeding into the distance.

Derek rises to his full height, eyes wide and trained on Stiles.

Stiles smirks, unabashed at his own showmanship.

Then, his knees buckle, and the world goes dark before he even manages to hit the floor.

He comes to in bits and pieces over the next few hours. The first time is when he's over Derek's shoulders in a fireman’s carry.

“Di’ I get ‘em?” he slurs, his teeth clicking with Derek's steps. He gets a leaf in the face from a low-hanging branch, but is too addled and exhausted to complain about it.

“Yeah, you got ‘em,” he hears Derek growl. “And then you set the whole damn mill on fire.”

“S’rry,” Stiles says as the world goes dark again.

The next time he comes to, his head is cradled gently on someone's lap, hands framing his face, and there's a lot of yelling going on, even if it all sounds muffled to Stiles’ senses. His eyes blink open, and Derek's face is just a few inches above his. The poor guy looks worried out of his mind, and if Stiles could muster the strength to reach out and reassure him, he would. As it stands, his every limb feels heavy, like they’re weighted down with concrete, so his best effort is a wiggle of his fingers.

“He’s breathing, he’s awake!” Derek shouts, this time loud and clear enough Stiles can actually make out the words.

That's when he sees the black veins winding up Derek's arms, pulling pain from Stiles’ body.

“Oh, shit,” he says, his tongue thick in his mouth, muffling his words. He'd pushed a little too hard, hadn’t he?

Derek's lips are moving, and he looks frantic, but Stiles cant make out the words anymore. His sense feel dull, like his whole body is stuffed up with wet cotton. His vision darkens around the edges and the world slowly fades to black. Above him, Derek keeps yelling.

The sun is peeking from behind curtains when he opens his eyes again. He's somewhere soft, and it takes him a moment to realize he's tucked into Derek's bed.

Stiles stretches out, tries to wake up fully, but when half of the vertebrae in his spine crack and nearly knock the wind out of him, he regrets the decision immensely.

He hears the thundering of feet running up stairs, and half a heartbeat later the door swings open and Derek does that looming thing he's so good at, looking mad as hell.

“You goddamn idiot!”

Stiles flinches, the sound of Derek's shout like a hammer to his head. He hisses, squeezes his eyes shut.

The bed dips, and when Stiles cracks open one of his eyes, Derek is sitting on the bed next to him, his hands reaching out. The moment he has one of Stiles’ wrists in his grip, black veins snake up his arm, and Stiles feels immensely better within the span of a few seconds.

“Have I been asleep all night?” he asks, eyes motioning toward the dawn creeping into the window.

Derek growls, low, but it doesn't sound angry. “It's sunset. You've been asleep for two days.”

“Oh, shit. Dad’s gonna kill me if I miss any more school.”

Derek rolls his eyes. “It’s a long weekend, you only missed one day.”

“Why am I not back home?”

Derek’s eyebrows do this cute little scrunch-up movement for a moment. Stiles almost laughs. “Your dad’s place? You set the mill on fire; he’s been dealing with clean up, and covering for our asses. He hasn’t been back to the house, so we figured the safest place for you to stay, after Melissa looked you over and got some fluids in you, was here.”

“Sorry,” he says, guiltily.

“You can’t do shit like that again, Stiles.” Derek’s tone is tense, angry.

Stiles sighs. “It’s not like I meant to go out and magically exhaust myself. You had six hunters pointing guns at you, dude! _Six!_ And even if their guns _weren’t_ loaded with wolfsbane bullets, that still would have killed you! What was I supposed to do, let you get shot!?”

Yelling, as it turns out, really hurts Stiles’ head. Even so, he doesn’t much pay attention to the throbbing of his head, given how upset he’s become.

“ _What were you supposed to do?_ ” Derek parrots back at him, angrier than before. “You let _me_ protect my pack, protect _you_ , even if it-”

“Don’t you dare say if it costs you your life, you son of a bitch!” Now Stiles is _really_ angry, despite his headache, despite the fact that his face hurts like a bitch and his heartbeat is making his head pound with every beat. He sits up and jabs an accusational finger into Derek’s chest. “Do you have any idea how lost we’d be without you?”

Derek flashes his fangs and he leans forward. “Do you have any idea how lost we’d be without _you_?” he counters through a mouthful of razor-sharp teeth.

Stiles swallows his words. He knows that the pack relies on him for a lot of things, even if they are mostly small. He’s the one who makes sure everyone has something good to eat the day after a big fight; he’s the one who cares for them, when they are all too tired to care for themselves. He laughs, derisively. “You’d all have to learn to cook so you wouldn’t starve. Lydia’s Google-Fu is just as good as mine, so it’s not like-”

“How do you not get it?” Derek whispers through clenched teeth, framing Stiles’ face with his hands. They are warm and rough on Stiles’ cheeks, and the gesture makes his heart clench.

Stiles stills, and the look Derek wears makes the bottom fall out of his stomach. “What?”

“Everyone would be _devastated_ , Stiles. Scott, your dad, the rest of the pack. Me. _Me._ ”

Stiles snorts, his brows furrowing. “ _You?_ You barely put up with me, you-”

Stiles always thought getting someone to shut up by kissing them was so cliche, so 90’s rom-com. But as soon as Derek’s soft, warm lips descend upon his, his opinion _vastly_ changes. His hands clench and unclench, so surprised and unsure how to react, but slowly, as Derek continues kissing him, he raises them up and circles his fingers around Derek’s wrists.

And it’s not just a kiss to shut him up, not really - that much Stiles can feel. He hears the sharp little sound Derek makes as he pulls back just to suck in a breath before he presses his lips to Stiles’ again and again and _again_. Each kiss is loaded with a myriad of things that Stiles can’t place, can’t decipher, can’t understand.

Thing is, Derek’s never been one for words. He’s the type of man who lets his face and posture and claws do most of the talking. Growling and frowning are his go-to moves, and Stiles is pretty sure he could be hired off as an eyebrow translator for the guy. Derek trying to talk in ways that aren’t words Stiles can usually deal with. But not this time, not really; he doesn’t know what to do with _this_ . Derek is kissing him - _kissing him_ , tenderly, sweetly - stealing the breath right from his lungs, but Stiles doesn’t understand what he’s trying to say.

It’s no secret to Stiles that he’s in love with Derek. Hell, he’s pretty sure that half the pack knows, but are good enough to keep it to themselves. But this? This is too much. Stiles has been content to pine over Derek from afar; he’d been doing a pretty good job of it the last few years. But pining after Derek because he knew there was nothing between them and getting kissed by Derek were on complete opposite sides of whatever weird scale his life was measured by, and Stiles didn’t know what to do.

As Derek pulls back, Stiles’ stomach churns. The kiss has ramped up his anxiety, and he knows that it must smell sour to Derek, because the were’s nostrils flare and Derek’s face returns to the usual glower his features seem to be permanently set to. Guy needs to check his warranty.

Just like that, the spell is broken. Derek’s hand move away from Stiles’ face, and the boy’s skin feels cold, bereft. He swallows as he watches Derek slowly move back, move away. He stands, eyes still boring into Stiles’ and turns, walks into the bathroom, and shuts the door in the most gentle manner.

Stiles is up and out of the bed before his brain has had time to process much else. He’s wearing one of Derek’s shirts, but he’s lacking pants and can’t find his own pair with a quick glance around the room. He spies a pair of sweatpants Derek let him wear before when his stuff was in the wash, so he nabs them off the back of the chair they rest on and crams his legs through the holes as he hops toward the bedroom door. As he passes the threshold, he hears Derek’s shower turn on.

He’s down the stairs so fast he nearly tumbles ass over elbow. Most of the joints in his body are screaming in agony, but the twisting and churning of his stomach drown it out.

At the bottom of the stairs, Jackson has a water bottle in hand, halfway to his open mouth. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Can you drive me home?” The question is out of Stiles’ mouth faster than he has time to process. He fully expects Jackson to tell him to fuck _right off_ , but the guy, surprisingly, gives Stiles a slow once-over, his brow furrowed.

“Let me get my keys.”

In the car, Stiles knows he can’t sit still. He’s never been one for stillness anyway, but he feels like he’s going to vibrate right out of his own skin, and the worst part is that he doesn’t completely understand why. His right leg is bouncing up and down relentlessly, but Jackson doesn’t reprimand him for it, which only serves to amp up Stiles’ anxiety another notch.

Stiles has his hand on the doorknob and a ‘thank you’ on the tip of his tongue when Jackson shuts off the car in the driveway behind the sheriff’s cruiser. He swallows the words and slowly turns.

“What happened?”

The worst part is that Jackson _actually_ sounds like he cares.

Stiles swallows past the huge lump in his throat. “He mostly yelled at me, which I get, but then he...”

Jackson raises a perfectly manicured eyebrow and manages to make it look half concerned, half bitchy.

“He kissed me.”

He hears leather straining, and he looks over to see the iron-tight grip Jackson suddenly has on the steering wheel.

After a moment, Jackson’s hands relax. “You okay?” he asks, his voice attaining a level of calm  that Stiles immediately can tell is fake and forced.

Stiles licks his lips, sighing. “I don’t... I don’t know? It’s, like, the last thing I was expecting, and even though I was apparently asleep for a few days over here, I’m still kind of amped up and I don’t know. _I don’t know_.”

“Okay,” Jackson responds, still doing that fake-calm thing. “Okay,” he nods.

Stiles doesn’t know what’s happening. And that’s not thing he likes to have happen, not at all. He’s usually the one that figures stuff out, knows what’s going on before everyone else.

When Jackson doesn’t say anything else, just starts breathing heavily through his nose, Stiles flaps his mouth open and closed a few times, unable to think of something to say. Eventually he just exits the car without saying anything at all.

He hears Jackson start the car up and pull away after he’s inside the house. His dad pokes his head through the entryway to the kitchen and gives him a stern look, which immediately lightens when he sees how lost Stiles must look.

“You okay, kiddo?” John asks, pulling his son into a hug.

“Sorry I had you worried,” Stiles replies, burying his face in the junction of his father’s shoulder and neck. “I didn’t mean to exhaust myself like that, but Derek had six guns on him, and I didn’t know where Allison and Chris were, and I thought I could handle it, but I-”

John sways on his feet, rocking his son in his arms from side to side. “I know,” he says, and Stiles believes him, knows his dad understands that he’d do anything to save the people he loves. “I know,” he says again, and the hug tightens. “Everyone else is okay, right?”

“I think so. Jackson brought me back, and even if he’s an asshole, I think he would have told me if someone else was hurt or out of commission.”

“I talked to Derek on the phone after he called to tell me the mill was on fire, but I haven’t heard much from him other than text updates on how you’ve been doing. Is he okay?”

Stiles sighs. “I don’t know. I think we’re fighting? We yelled at each other and then he - uh, he just kind of quietly walked away and locked himself in the bathroom.”

“You’ll figure it out,” John assures him, releasing his son from the circle of his arms.

They call out for pizza, and Stiles doesn’t even give his dad a dirty look when he orders his veggie delight pie with a sprinkling of bacon. They eat until the pizza box is empty, and watch trash TV until their sides hurt from laughing.

Stiles goes to bed in his bedroom, and it feels hollow without Derek there to warm the bed beside him, without the soft sounds the werewolf makes when he sleeps. His sheets smell like whatever laundry detergent he’d bought last time he’d been to the store, and Stiles’ heart feels empty without Derek’s scent to usher him into dreamland.

It’s amazing what a good night’s sleep can do for someone, though. Stiles wakes up feeling better than he has in a long time, and he gets ready for school without the usual jetlag-like feeling he’s often prone to.

Classes go by like normal, but at lunch, the pack seems to be regarding him carefully. In the lunch line, they stand a little closer to him than normal, and when he sits, he feels a little squished between Erica and Scott. From across the table, Jackson keeps glancing at him.

“What?” he says, past a mouthful of chicken and pasta.

Erica purses her lips. “We wanna make sure you’re okay.”

Stiles shrugs. “I’m about as good as I’m gonna get.”

And it’s not a lie.

Sure, he’s pretty sure his magic is gonna be tapped out for a good week or two, but he doesn’t hurt, doesn’t even have a headache. His black eye is mostly gone, too, which is something he’d completely forgotten about until he’d gone to use the bathroom when he was eating pizza with his dad.

As for the rest of it? Stiles _knows_ pining, okay? He spent the better portion of his young life pining after a certain strawberry-blonde girl who had rebuffed his every advance, practically ignoring his very existence. He and Lydia are friends now, which Stiles thinks is pretty cool, all things considered. He was just sad it took them all getting mixed up in the same supernatural shenanigans for them to come to speaking terms, but, hey, he’d take what he could get. Even Jackson wasn’t as much as a douchebag as he used to be, which was quite a feat, considering how far his head was up his own ass at one time. Still was, sometimes - just not _all the time_. Point was, Stiles could deal with pining. He’d put his uber-crush on Derek on the back burner. The next time they talked, Derek would tell him the kiss was a mistake, or if it wasn’t, it was the only way he thought he could either make Stiles shut up, or just make a point.

And that was fine.

Well, it wasn’t.

But it was _fine._

Erica, however, didn’t seem too happy with that answer, and her lids lowered to slits as she snorted at her lunch tray. She leaned her head on Stiles’ shoulder and sighed.

“We got your back,” she says.

“Thanks,” Stiles says through another bite of lunch, but he’s not quite sure what he’s supposed to be thankful for, exactly.

Werewolves, _right?_

Stiles’ dad is home for the next few days - “after cleaning up the fiery mess at the mill,” he tells Stiles while giving him a very pointed _dad look_ \- so Stiles steers clear of the pack house until his dad gets called back in. It’s nice spending time just the two of them again, but Friday night is the full moon, and Stiles likes the little tradition he has going.

So, after his dad drives away, Stiles piles into his jeep and makes his way to the pack house. By the time he arrives, it's not quite sundown, and he knows everyone will be antsy. Even Lydia and Allison, who don’t feel the pull of the moon, aren’t quite immune to the night, and by the time the moon rises, they are sick of the restlessness in everyone else and help Stiles practically shove the wolves out of the front door.

Derek, however, is nowhere to be seen.

Stiles doesn’t dwell on it. Instead, he rolls up his sleeves and heads right into the kitchen. It’ll be a good few hours before the wolves come back from their run, and when they do, Stiles knows how hungry they will be.

So, nights of the full moon? That’s when Stiles goes crazy.

He makes all of the bacon and eggs they have. Allison and Lydia help him peel and shred potatoes for latkes. He makes toasted PB&J sandwiches. Thank God Derek was smart enough to build the kitchen with dual ovens, because Stiles uses one to keep the food he’s already cooked warm, and uses the other to heat up the three quiche he’d made and frozen a few weeks ago. Thanks to the four quart food processor Stiles had convinced Derek to splurge on, Stiles has become a master of salsa and potatoes au gratin.

It’s past midnight when he hears the front door open, and several pairs of heavy feet come thumping into the dining room where Lydia and Allison have already started to bring out food. Stiles is finishing up the latkes when he senses someone watching him, and he turns to come face to face with Derek, who looks less like a predator and more like prey with his wide eyes and half-lost look on his face.

Stiles watches as Derek opens his mouth like he’s going to say something, but when nothing comes out, the were licks his lips and sighs.

Turning his attention back to the frying pan, Stiles bites his lips and gathers his thoughts. “I’m sorry about what happened,” he says after a long moment, spooning the last of the latkes from the oil and onto the drying rack. He flips the switch and moves the pan from the heat, then wipes his hands on a dish towel as he turns back to Derek.

Somehow, the man looks as lost as Stiles feels.

Stiles swallows. “We’re okay, right?”

Derek opens his mouth again, but still can’t seem to make any sound. Eventually, he just nods.

Stiles holds out a tray of latkes. “Come on, big bad. Let’s get the rest of this out on the table.”

Though he sees the way Derek’s shoulders ease, like the tension has been drained right out of him, Stiles stays quiet. He picks up the remaining items from the counter and follows Derek into the dining room.

They all eat until it hurts, even the humans. Hardly anything is leftover, and since Stiles cooked, and Lydia and Allison helped, everyone else gets stuck on dish detail. Derek takes Stiles plate from in front of him with a soft look, and Stiles rubs at his over-filled stomach. He and the girls, minus Erica, head to the living room, where they argue over what to watch on Netflix. Eventually, Stiles stops caring, given how he’s half asleep already. By the time Scott and the others start filing into the room, Stiles is having more than a hard time keeping his eyes open.

When he wakes up, it’s with a soft start. The TV is off, and given how quiet the room is, it’s not hard to devise that everyone else is asleep. There’s a warm presence, a large hand running through his hair, and Stiles cranes his neck up to see Derek standing over him. He’s in a wife-beater and loose, dark grey sweats, and his hand pulls away when Stiles looks up at him.

“I didn’t mean to wake you,” he hears Derek whisper into the night.

“‘S alright,” Stiles says, rubbing at his eyes. “You heading to bed?”

“Yeah.”

“Would you hand me the blanket on the armchair? I’m cold.”

“You can...”

Stiles feels that his heartbeat must be deafening. He swallows, knowing what Derek is going to say.

“You can come upstairs, you can... I won’t-”

“Okay,” Stiles says, easily.

“Yeah?” Derek’s voice is soft, almost too quiet. It makes Stiles’ stomach twist up. Though, that could also be the literal mountain of food he’d put away earlier that night.

Before he can second-guess himself, he stands up and steps away from the couch. It takes Derek a moment to get moving, but as soon as he does, Stiles follows after him, up the stairs and down the hall, to Derek’s bedroom they go.

Derek pushes the door open, then ushers Stiles inside, closing the door behind him.

“I’ve missed this bed,” Stiles whines as he practically throws himself onto the mattress.

Stiles turns back over when he notices Derek’s been taking too long. The wolf is standing there, bare feet on the carpet, bathed in a beam of moonlight.

“You okay?” Stiles asks, his voice sleep-rough. He’s tired, wants to go back to sleep, but he doesn’t like the way Derek looks at him with what seems to be trepidation.

“The other day,” Derek sighs, running his hands through his hair.

Stiles leans up and props himself up on his elbows. His heart kicks up a bit.

“It’s okay,” Stiles says, and he knows that his heartbeat is sure when he speaks, because that’s the honest truth. Derek kissed him. Yeah, it had messed with his head for a little bit, and Stiles still doesn’t quite understand _why_ it happened in the first place, but despite his gigantic crush on Derek, it hadn’t really _changed_ things between them.

Right?

He hears Derek sigh again, but the wolf crosses the distance he’d left between himself and the bed and crawls under the covers next to Stiles.

It’s dark, so Stiles can’t actually _see_ Derek, but he knows they are facing one another.

“Jackson told me that you seemed okay afterward, when he drove you home. I’m sorry that I... I’m sorry.”

“It was just a kiss, man. You don’t have anything to be sorry for.”

He hears Derek growl, low and deep. It’s probably not a good idea to lie to a werewolf when you’re sharing a bed with them, but Stiles has had dumber ideas.

“I shouldn’t have kissed you.”

Stiles doesn’t like the feeling of solid ground being yanked out from under him, but, well, it can’t be helped. Of course Derek hadn’t meant to kiss him, of course-

“It was wrong of me not to get your consent first, and Jackson came back after he’d taken you home and-”

“What?” Stiles asks, completely lost.

“I shouldn’t have kissed you without making sure it was okay. After all that’s happened to you, I-”

“What?”

Derek sighs. “Would you stop asking that? _What_ what?”

“You’re sorry because you kissed me without, what, _my permission_?”

“Stiles, I don’t want to ever put you in a position where you feel pressured by me.”

“How could you possibly pressure me, and into doing _what_? What are you talking about?”

“After the nogitsune-”

Stiles presses the heels of his palms against his eyes. “Oh, God,” he grinds out.

“We all want to make sure that you’re okay, that you’re never in a position where you feel you don’t have control, and-”

Stiles kicks the blankets off of his legs and feet in a mild tizzy. “So, what? Everyone is just nice to me because they feel sorry for me?”

Derek’s heavy sigh says enough.

“Oh, God, when Jackson took me home, and he was being all nice to me, he thought - oh, God. Oh my God.” Stiles goes to stand up. “You’re all assholes,” he grumbles. “I’m not weak, I’m-”

“Vulnerable.”

Stiles’ head whips to the side, and he meets Derek’s carefully-guarded gaze as the were moves to sit up.

“No one thinks you’re weak, Stiles. No one. You might not have the physical prowess of a wolf, but you have more emotional and mental stability and strength than everyone in the pack combined. You’re _not_ weak. But you’re vulnerable.”

“Breakable,” Stiles counters.

“No,” Derek responds, leaning forward. “Fragile, maybe, just because you don’t heal the same as everyone else; when you get cut, you end up with scars. Your bruises take weeks to heal, where mine take minutes. But you’re not weak, and you’re _far_ from breakable.”

Stiles looks down at his hands, then moves to fold his legs underneath him. “So, you’re mad you kissed me because you think I’m _vulnerable._ ”

“I’m mad I kissed you in the spur of the moment like that, without taking into account how you’d react or feel, since I didn’t have your clear consent.”

Blinking owlishly down at his hands, Stiles sighs. “That doesn’t explain _why_ , though. You kissed me after yelling about how much I mean to the pack.”

“I kissed you, trying to convey how devastated _I_ would be if we lost you.”

Stiles slowly looks up at Derek, who just sits there, his hair slightly rumpled from when he’d been lying down on his pillow, his face blank, his shoulders slightly tense. Stiles shifts on the bed, moves to face Derek, their crossed knees almost touching. “You’re not a man of many words, dude, by any stretch of meaning, whereas I’m the complete opposite of you and never stop running my mouth. We have to find some kind of bridge between us, middleground, because I don’t get what you’re trying to say. I mean, you’d be just as lost without me in the pack as you would anyone else, right?”

Derek sighs, but Stiles waits patiently for an answer. “It’s not the same.”

“How is it not the same?”

Derek sighs again, and Stiles hears him swallow thickly. Finally, Derek speaks. “You’re the only one I let sleep in my bed.”

Stiles scrunches his face. “That’s not an explanation. You’re the Alpha; of course you wouldn’t let another wolf sleep in your bed. That’s, like, survival instinct 101. I’m just a puny human; I don’t pose any kind of threat to you-”

“Do I need to bring up what you did at the mill the other night, because that wasn’t _nothing_ -”

“I’m not a wolf, I don’t pose a threat to your _status_ -”

“ _It’s not the same_ ,” Derek echoes, like repeating himself will somehow _make_ Stiles understand what the hell he means.

Stiles practically throws himself down on the bed. “You keep saying it like I’m going to suddenly get it.” Once again, he presses the heels of his palms to his eyelids.

He feels the bed shift next to him, the Derek’s body heat radiates off of him in waves as he nestles himself close to Stiles’ prone position. Suddenly, there’s a warm hand in Stiles’ hair, combing through it, reminding him of when his mom would do the same when he laid his head in her lap. He remembers the last time Derek did it, and how it felt just as good then as it does now.

Stiles moves his hands away from his face, turns his head toward Derek and looks up at him, their gazes connecting. Derek’s eyebrows are slightly furrowed, as it they usually are, but there’s a serious look about his features Stiles doesn’t see too often. Sure, Derek usually wears _some kind_ of serious expression, but it’s usually a combination - like, when regarding Stiles, it’s a seriously irritated expression, or a seriously incredulous expression - but not like this. The way Derek is staring down at him is doing all kinds of things to Stiles’ insides.

Derek moves slowly, like he’s afraid he’s going to spook Stiles, which, to be fair, Stiles’ heart has suddenly started beating like a jackrabbit’s, but it’s not his fault. He’s just so god damn good-looking, and now he’s all up in Stiles’ space, and- Derek’s hand cups the back of his neck, and he leans over Stiles, settling most of his weight on his other elbow. Half of his body is practically on top of Stiles, who inadvertently moves his hands up and rests them on Derek’s sides. He leans down, close enough that they are sharing breath between them, that their noses bump against one another, their lips almost touching.

“You sleep in my bed. You wear my clothes and carry my scent. You take care of the pack in ways I don't, I cant. You take care of _me._ I want to take care of _you_. It’s not. The same.” Derek’s voice is hardly a whisper, but it rings out in Stiles’ ears like it’s been shouted it, because-

Oh.

 _Oh_.

Stiles presses up, hardly a fraction of an inch, closing the distance between them, pressing his lips to Derek’s.

And Derek presses back, again and again and _again_ , and now Stiles gets it, now he understands.

Derek’s right, Stiles realizes; it’s _not_ the same.

He winds his arms around Derek, one around his back, the other around his neck, and pulls the wolf down on top of him, their chests pressing together, and Derek moans softly against Stiles’ mouth. Stiles takes that as an open invitation, and parts his own mouth, immediately satisfied with the way Derek’s tongue sweeps past his lips and presses against his own. The hand at the base of his skull moves back into his hair, carding through the strands, bringing Stiles closer still as Derek presses one of his legs between Stiles’.

Stiles is breathless, and when he moves his legs, he feels Derek’s erection press up against the junction of his thigh and hip, and _oh._ He pulls back, just the slightest bit, just enough to take a breath, but Derek is like a machine in the way he moves, like he’s starving, possessed, and Stiles’ skin in his mouth is the only thing that can possibly save him. He laves open-mouthed kisses up Stiles’ jawline, tugs at the lobe of his left ear gently, bites, with human-blunt teeth, into the corded muscle of his neck as he travels down, down, _down._

Derek rears back, sits on his knees as he reaches for the hem of his shit. He pulls it off with little finesse, like it’s some kind of race, and when Stiles takes too long to get the message, Derek stuffs his hands under the boy’s shirt and practically rips it off his head. He moves down, situates himself between Stiles’ legs, guides his legs to wrap around Derek’s waist.

“This okay?” he asks, as he practically collapses onto Stiles, one hand snaking under his body so his hand rests in the middle of Stiles’ back.

“Do you trust me?”

The question makes Derek pause. He blinks down at Stiles, then nods, like it’s a ridiculous thing for him to be asked in the first place.

“Then trust me enough to tell you if it’s too much. This? Right here? This is blanket consent. You move me how you want, touch me how you want, do _whatever you want_ , and if I don’t like it, you’ll know.”

Derek doesn’t laugh. Instead, he lowers himself down on top of Stiles again, grinds his hips down, presses his face into the side of Stiles’ neck. “I'm not - we’re not. I want to take care of you, Stiles, I want-” he gasps out, between breaths. “This isn’t moving too fast?”

Stiles laughs, his hands skittering across Derek’s toned, slightly sweat-damp back. “As if every conversation we’ve ever had wasn’t foreplay enough. I’ve been in love with you for years.”

It takes Derek completely freezing in his arms for Stiles to realize what he’d just said.

“I-”

“Don’t,” Stiles urges, but without venom. “I didn’t say it to hear it back. I said it so you’d know.”

He’s rewarded with an open-mouthed kiss to his neck, as tender as it is wet. Stiles huffs out a laugh, and threads his fingers through Derek’s hair, unsurprised at how thick and soft it is. He’s always wanted to tangle his bony fingers in Derek’s locks - it’s something that’s made an appearance in many of his fantasies - and now, as he does so, Derek groans contentedly into the meat of his shoulder.

Feeling bold, and more than a little brash, Stiles can’t help the laugh that escapes him. “Oh, you like that?” he says, carding his fingers across Derek’s scalp, using just a little pressure.

Derek makes the same contented sound, this time a little louder.

“Oh?” Stiles dares. “What about here?” He moves his fingers behind Derek’s ears and gives a good scratch.

Derek laughs against his skin, and it’s the most beautiful sound Stiles has ever heard. He pulls back, looking down at Stiles with more than a little fondness in his eyes, but Stiles sees the trepidation behind it. “We - we don’t have to.”

Stiles arches a brow. “No, we don’t _have_ to. I’d certainly _like_ to.” He raises his arms and cradles Derek’s face in his hands. “But it’s as much _your choice_ as it is mine.”

Derek’s mouth drops open the smallest bit and he blinks in surprise, like Stiles considering his past wasn’t something he even contemplated as a possibility. Which just goes to show how selfless Derek can be at times. Here he was, with the rest of his pack, making sure Stiles was taken care of, didn’t feel pressured or out of control, while no one was taking into account his own troubled history regarding shitty relationships.

Unable to help himself, Stiles leans up and kisses Derek’s open mouth, softly, gently, as tenderly as he can muster. He leans back, rests his head against the pillow, staring up at Derek and awaiting a decision.

It doesn’t take Derek long to decide. He leans down and presses frantic kiss after frantic kiss to Stiles’ waiting lips, winding his arms around the figure beneath him, hauling him up and crushing them together as tightly as he can manage without squeezing the very air from Stiles’ lungs. He sits up, taking Stiles with him, Stiles’ straddling his lap, and licks into his mouth.

Stiles pulls back to catch his breath, his heart threatening to beat right out of his chest. He feels Derek’s stubble scratch at his neck as the were sucks marks onto his skin. Stiles shivers all the way down to his toes, high on the idea that he’s going to be covered in hickies _and_ beard burn. Derek must feel the shiver, because he growls and bites just a fraction harder against Stiles’ skin.

But covering Stiles’ neck and shoulders with marks from his stubble and his teeth isn’t enough, because Derek hefts Stiles up, until the boy’s on his knees astride Derek’s lap, and starts swiping his tongue across Stiles’ collarbone. He gives a particularly hard bite just above Stiles’ left nipple, causing Stiles to yelp and clench his hands in Derek’s hair. Derek’s rough growl at the action only sends another shiver through Stiles, breath catching in his throat.

Stiles hisses as Derek takes a nipple into his mouth, suckling at it briefly before swiping his tongue across it. He practically lunges in his impatience to give Stiles’ other nipple the same treatment, and Stiles feels like he’s going to shake apart in Derek’s arms.

Derek’s fingers toy with the elastic of the waistband of his boxers, and Stiles knows that he doesn’t have enough coherence to say anything, so he just nods vigorously until Derek understands and begins to slowly pull them down. He gets them far enough down Stiles’ thighs that Stiles’ cock is set free, and Derek manages to somehow pull the garment free from Stiles’ body. With a strong grip on Stiles’ biceps, Derek urges the boy up, and Derek falls backward while pulling Stiles forward. He ushers his hands up, and Stiles moves to grip the headboard to keep from falling, on his knees poised above-

Derek cranes his neck up, takes Stiles’ cock in his mouth, and Stiles cries out _,_ helpless-sounding, shaken.

Strong hands grip Stiles’ ass, urge him forward, and he feels his cock slide further into Derek's mouth.  He gasps out, clutches at the headboard so tightly his fingers hurt, but Derek just hums around his full mouth. Stiles chances a peek, and almost comes at the sight; Derek's eyes are softly closed, his face relaxed, and he looks completely blissed-out, like Stiles’ dick is the best thing he's tasted. With great effort, Stiles manages to release the grip of one of his hands, and he reaches down and threads his fingers back through Derek's hair. Derek moans around him, and Stiles toes curl from the pleasure.

He's almost there, _almost_ , can feel the telltale spark of his orgasm curl at the base of his spine. But Derek, the bastard, pulls off, curls one hand around the base of Stiles’ cock and _grips._

Stiles whines, is halfway to tears when he hears a noise to his left. His eyes snap to the source if the noise, and he sees Derek rummaging in the drawer of his bedside table, single-handedly procuring a tube of lubricant.

“Not yet,” Derek grinds out beneath him, and Stiles almost shakes apart at how rough and wrecked his voice sounds, knowing he's the reason for it.

“Not yet?” Stiles parrots back at him, his legs quaking with the effort to keep himself upright.

“Don't want you to come yet, not at least until I get my fingers in you.”

Stiles almost chokes above him, delighted and half delirious at the prospect. He hears the snick of the tube opening, and the next thing he knows is Derek's thick finger probing at his rim.  He releases the hold he has on Derek's hair to grip the headboard again, terrified he's going to shake apart as Derek takes him in his mouth again.

There's a slight pressure, and Stiles feels Derek's finger slip inside of him-

He bites his tongue to keep from coming.

Stiles is no stranger to a finger in his ass - he's a pro at jerking off, making himself feel good - but Derek's fingers are broader, thicker, and hit places Stiles’ can't, and, _well,_ they belong to Derek.

“Derek,” Stiles cries, his voice nearly gone.

Derek presses a second finger inside of him, and that's all Stiles can take before he grips the headboard so tightly his knuckles turn white. He gasps, sputters as white-hot lightning courses down his spine.

And Derek, below him, _swallows every drop_. He presses the broad palm of his free hand against Stiles’ ass, forcing Stiles’ cock right to the back of his throat, and the sensation of him swallowing around Stiles, Derek's fingers still pumping in and out of his clenching hole, make stars burst behind Stiles’ eyes.

Stiles is vaguely aware he's being man-handled, but it feels more like an out-of-body experience than reality. Reaching up, he wipes the sweat from his brow with shaking hands, his whole body twitching in tune with the beat of his frantic heart,  radiating out like ripples in water. Derek's fingers fall still inside of him, but remain present nonetheless.

Slowly, Stiles opens his eyes.

Derek looms over him, now that Stiles is on his back, and his eyes glow alpha red. Stiles reaches up with trembling hands, cups Derek's face with his palms, still catching his breath. “Der,” he pants out. “Please. _Please.”_

 _“Stiles,_ ” Derek growls past a mouthful of fangs.

Stiles clenches around Derek's fingers. Derek’s growl lowers in tone, and Stiles bites his bottom lip.

“Fuck me,” Stiles pleads.

Derek snarls, actually _snarls,_ and suddenly his ears are pointed and his eyebrows disappears.

Stiles smiles, feeling powerful, giddy. “Please, Der. _Please.”_

Derek pants, his features slowly returning to normal. His fingers twitch where they are still stuffed up inside Stiles’ hole. “Are you - are you sure?”

“I've - I've never-"

“But Malia?”

Stiles freezes, tenses. He swallows, eyes locked with Derek's. “It's not the same,” he whispers.

Derek nods, understanding, just like Stiles knew he would, because it's the truth. His past with Malia? Stiles hadn't been in complete control, not all the time, and his mind was muddled, things had been different.

The were shifts, leans down and kisses Stiles’ lips, softly, gently, and sweet as sugar, and Stiles’ heart swells. His thumbs rub across Derek's cheeks, startled to find them wet. He blinks up at Derek, who winds a hand around Stiles’ wrist, and brings the hand to his lips, pressing a kiss to the palm of Stiles’ hand.

Stiles shifts his hips, and Derek's fingers slip further inside of him. He hears Derek's breath catch in his throat, and his own breath is pushed from his lungs when Derek gets with the program and begins to scissor his fingers where they are stuffed up inside of Stiles fluttering body.

“Derek,” Stiles whispers when he feels another finger probe at his entrance. There's a burn to it this time, but it's a pleasant one, a soft ache that keeps him grounded, anchored. When the press of three no longer burns, and Derek moves his fingers with ease, Stiles is shaking, his cock hard again, straining against his stomach.

Derek pulls his fingers free, slowly, and Stiles hisses at the feeling of being empty. He feels strung-out, and Derek doesn't even have his dick in him yet.

“I need-" Derek pants as he leans over and starts rummaging through the open drawer again.

“No, I-” Stiles stills, bites his lips.

Derek pauses above him, turning his face so their eyes can meet.

“I know you can’t, uh, pass anything. And I’m, good, clean I mean. And I know you are too. I just thought you might-”

He hears Derek swallow. “You... you shouldn’t, just because you think I-”

“Iwannafeelyou,” Stiles interrupts in a rush, almost biting his tongue he speaks so quickly.

Derek swallows again, then lets out a shaking breath. After a moment, he pulls his hand back, out of the drawer, and leans down to kiss Stiles again and again and again.

It’s slower this time, like Derek thinks they have years, not merely the night. And _hey_ , Stiles thinks, his heart clenching within the confines of his chest, _they kind of do_. Kiss after kiss is pressed to all corners of Stiles’ body, and it takes a little while for him to realize that Derek is kissing every mole across the exspanse of his skin. He laughs when Derek kisses the mole on his left ankle, surprised he even knew it was there in the first place - he can’t even recall ever really being barefoot in Derek’s presence for him to notice its existence in the first place.

It’s not long before Stiles is almost in tears he’s so hard, feeling wrung-out, having reached a level of desperation he didn’t know his body could get to. His sweaty palms scramble at Derek’s shoulders, his voice hoarse, his head swimming. Above him, Derek’s eyes fade in and out of their red Alpha-glow, like he’s barely containing himself.

“Please,” Stiles begs him. “Please, Derek. Please fuck me, please, please, _please_.”

Derek leans down and kisses him, presses his tongue into Stiles’ mouth as if to stop his words, or perhaps to simply steal them right from their source. Stiles reaches up and grips Derek’s hair as tightly as his shaking hands allow him, desperate, _aching._

But Derek takes pity on him, or his own control finally falters - whatever the reason, Stiles doesn’t care, because suddenly he feels the blunt press of Derek’s cock head at his entrance, and he has to remember to breathe. Derek presses in, in, _in_ , and Stiles takes it all, shaking in his arms, panting like he’s just ran a marathon, limbs tense as he clings to the man above him. Derek moves slowly, presses in only when Stiles relaxes, gentle in a way that Stiles always knew he’d be capable of but had never really, truly witnessed. He’s petting Stiles’ hair the entire while, speaking sweet words past fangs, most of what he says trailing off as he tries to catch his breath.

After what seems like eons, Derek bottoms out.

Stiles doesn’t realize he’s crying until Derek’s wiping the tears from the corners of his eyes.

“You okay?” Derek pants out from above him.

Unable to trust his own voice, Stiles just nods, easing the grip his fingers have in Derek’s hair.

Derek leans down and nuzzles the side of Stiles’ face in a far more affectionate move than Stiles had ever anticipated, and he barks out a surprised laugh that only ends in the two of them groaning when Stiles inadvertently clenches around Derek’s cock.

Almost as if he’s unable to help himself, Derek’s hips give a little jerk, and Stiles gasps at the sensation. He squeezes his legs around Derek’s waist, like he’s spurring him on, and Derek quickly gets the message. The movement is slow as Derek pulls out little by little, as if he’s afraid he’ll hurt Stiles. And, hey, Stiles gets it; squishy human. Besides, he’s feeling far too good to snark about it. But when he leans his head over and presses a kiss to the side of Derek’s face, his lips meet hairy sideburns and _holy shit,_ Derek’s even more wolfed-out than just fangs and pointy ears.

“Oh, god, that’s so hot,” he groans out, his fingers sliding down Derek’s sweaty back.

Derek huffs a laugh into the meat of his shoulder, and it sounds to Stiles as if Derek’s surprised that Stiles is telling the truth.

“It is,” Stiles reiterates, hitching his hips upward and making Derek slid back in just a little bit.

He feels rather than hears or sees Derek swallow, like somehow he never thought someone would accept him like this.

Stiles leans up again and runs the tip of his nose against Derek’s pointed ear. “You have no idea,” he manages to say as Derek slowly starts to push back inside of him again. His breath hitches, but he keeps talking anyway. “Like, just the idea that I drive you even half as crazy as you make me is the best compliment anyone’s ever paid me.”

Derek outright laughs now, and it makes Stiles smile. He kisses Stiles’ cheek and pulls back the smallest bit, his features slowly morphing back into a more human visage.

Stiles cups Derek’s face in his hands, still smiling. “I like this look, too, though. I’ll take you anyway I can get you.”

And the look that Derek wears absolutely tugs on Stiles’ heartstrings. It’s like Derek never thought someone would ever accept every part of him, both man and wolf, with equal amounts of love. But to Stiles, they aren’t different; Derek’s just Derek, that’s all. Sure, he gets a little hairier sometimes, and God only know where his eyebrows go, but it’s still Derek underneath all that growliness.

Stiles pulls him down for another kiss. “Come on, sourwolf,” he teases. “Take care of me.”

Derek pushes back in, all the way in, then pulls out once more, but keeps the pace steady, slow.

Letting his eyes drift shut, Stiles sighs, still feeling wrung-out, but more than up for round two. He leans his head back on the pillow, baring his neck without so much as a second thought, and Derek whine’s above him then buries his face in the juncture of Stiles’ shoulder.

It’s slow, their love-making. And as much as Stiles feels like a sap for thinking of it like that, there’s no other way to describe it, not really. The reverent way Derek holds him, pressing kiss after kiss against the skin of Stiles’ throat, the way his breath hitches and hiccups when he presses back into Stiles’ body; it’s all evidence of the bond between them, how strong their connection really goes.

As much as Stiles hates to admit it, he won’t last long, not like this. Derek’s hitting that God damn magic button inside him practically every other press inward, and it feels it’s a miracle that he’s still _alive_ for all the sensations that are coursing through his body.

He can tell when Derek’s getting close, too. The grip the were has on him tightens, not enough to bruise - Derek would never hurt him - and his breath starts coming short, like he’s holding every so often. Derek stills after a moment, completely bottomed out, and Stiles can feel his muscles go taught and then - oh, _oh._ There’s something warm and wet inside of him, and he can’t take it anymore. He reaches down and grips his own dick and starts stroking, fervently, as Derek kisses his temple and pants against the side of his face. As he comes, he hears Derek hiss - likely from the way Stiles’ body starts to clench and tense. He’s slow to come back down, and Derek comforts him through every moment, whispering words in his ear. Stiles only catches some of them, but it makes him smile, little pants of, “ _so beautiful_ ,” “p _erfect_ ,” “ _so good to me_ ,” in Derek’s gravel-rough voice.

When Derek slides out of him, he feels bereft, empty, and he can’t contain the little helpless while that escapes him. Stiles hears Derek chuckle as he moves to get out of bed, and a few moments later Derek returns with a wet washcloth. Stiles holds out his hand, completely prepared to clean himself up, but Derek smacks his hand out of the way and does it himself. He pushes Stiles over on his side and lifts up one of his legs, carefully running the damp cloth between his cheeks.

It’s weird, sure, because this isn’t something anyone has ever done to Stiles, but at the same time he feels it’s incredibly intimate, that Derek cares enough for him that, even when they are both come-drunk, still trying to catch their breath, he wants to take care of Stiles.

Stiles inhales sharply when he feels something slick and warm seep out of him - _man_ , sex can be gross sometimes - but the low growl that Derek emits as he abandons the washcloth makes Stiles’ entire body light up again. He feels Derek’s fingers glide over his hole, and he bites down, a little too hard, on his lips in order to keep his mouth shut. It’s a futile effort, however, because in the next instant, Derek’s fingers are there, inside of him once more, and Stiles realizes - _oh, god_ \- Derek’s pushing his come back inside of Stiles. The breath that stutters out of him, and the sharp whine when he inhales only seems to spur Derek on, because the next thing Stiles knows, Derek’s got two fingers lazily pressing in and out of him.

He’s shuddering, and his limbs feel heavy, tingly like they’re full of static. “ _Please_ ,” he pants out, because it’s the only word he can manage.

Slowly, Derek eases his fingers out and lowers Stiles’ leg.

Stiles feels Derek fussing around a bit for a moment - he’s too tired to open his eyes and see what the man is really doing - but after a moment, he feels the front of Derek’s body press up against the back of his own, an arm coming around and pulling them together. He feels Derek press a kiss to the back of his neck. “Love you,” he thinks he hears Derek whisper, just before sleep takes him.

 

\---

 

Three weeks later, Stiles is sits up in his desk chair at his dad’s house when he hears a strange sound coming from downstairs. He descends the staircase cautiously, preparing a fireball in case things get ugly. When the sound persists, and Stiles manages to figure out it’s coming from the front door, he slowly edges around the room. He manages to see nothing out of the peephole, which only puts him on edge. It might be a stupid idea, but he opens the door anyway-

And comes face to face with a large, black wolf.

Stiles extinguishes the fire in his hand with a flick of his wrist.

“Really, dude?” he asks.

Derek’s ears flatten backward.

“I thought we fixed this curse yesterday,” he says, stepping aside so Derek can enter the house. “Come on; the ingredients to the counterspell are still fresh. I’ll take care of you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THE END.

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for this chapter: minor violence, mild panic issues


End file.
